Bones of the River - Edgar Wallace [53]
“O chief,” said Bones, “this is a little eye that sees and remembers, and it desires to look upon the brave Ochori in battle. Now, let your young men play for me, pretending that they are warriors of two camps, attacking one another. But this you shall tell them, that if one man hurts the other, he shall be whipped,” he added hastily, knowing with what enthusiasm these spear players entered into the spirit of their exercise.
On the lower deck of the Zaire a troubled Sergeant Ahmet took counsel with a number of his comrades.
“Let no man speak to Tibbetti and tell him that I have turned the handle, that your faces should be in this wonderful box,” he said. For, in Bones’ absence, he had that day photographed his self-conscious soldiery. “Tomorrow morning, when it is light, I myself will get the pictures out of the box, for Tibbetti has told me, that all that is within there he will see. And I am a full sergeant, and he may take my stripes away.”
In the light of the early morning sun, under the curious and interested eyes of his friends, he opened the camera and looked carefully, unrolling the film foot by foot.
“Now, God be thanked!” said Ahmet in his relief. “For it seems that I did not take your picture at all. There is nothing there but yellow ribbon. Let us roll it up again, so that Tibbetti shall not know.”
The preparations for the great battle picture were made on an unprecedented scale. Bones rehearsed and rehearsed until his shirt stuck to his body, and then rehearsed again. And all the women and children of the village stood round, their fingers to their teeth, and watched the producer at work.
“Not there, you silly old ass!” screamed Bones in strident English. “Get over there, you silly old josser! Not there, go there! No, not there! Oh, you ditherer!”
These and similar injunctions, made the confused native a little more confused, and it is probable that the battle picture would never have been taken but for certain unforeseen circumstances.
“Now, all men go away, so that there is nobody in sight. And then you shall come from here, and you from there, and fight, and when I run to you and say ‘Stop’ you shall all lay down your spears.”
At the moment the actors withdrew, ready for the mimic battle, Obaga came swiftly along the forest path, and with him his brother and his ten kinsmen and their kinsmen by marriage.
“Man, where is my woman?” said Obaga, and he addressed the tall lover of M’Libi.
“Who knows, hunter?” replied the man.
“You know now, but how long will you know?” said Obaga, and struck with his spear.
His enemy twisted slightly, took the cut across his shoulder and ran. Obaga’s spear brought him to the ground. And in a second there was war.
Into the open they came, cutting, parrying, thrusting, yelling those shrill cries, meaningless but ominous, which the Ochori have screamed throughout ages.
“Stick it!” yelled Bones. “Turn the handle, Ahmet. That’s good! Go it, boys!” he shrieked in his best producer’s style. “That’s it, a little more to the left. Don’t hurt yourselves, you silly old jossers!”
And then in Bomongo he roared! – “I come.”
He strode with a dignified and picturesque swing of his shoulders into their midst, and raised his hand in a lordly gesture.
“Stop!” he cried. But they did not stop. A spear knocked his helmet off, a war club brought him to his knees. Bones reached for his gun, but he had not come armed. Fortunately, Sergeant Ahmet had…
“I thought it was a bit too realistic,” explained Bones, who had spent the morning admiring his bandaged head in a looking-glass. “But, of course, I never dreamt that there was a jolly old war on. And when you come to think of it, dear old Ham, it wasn’t half a bad stunt – my being knocked out. It’ll look so wonderfully thrillin’ that people will just sit tight in their jolly old seats and howl! I’ll bet it’s in all the